State Department Deletes Transgender Travel Advisory
The deletion of transgender-related content appears to comply with President Trump's order recognizing sex as binary and fixed.
The U.S. State Department has completely deleted information for transgender individuals from its international travel advisory page.
The department’s “International Travel” section on the website, which used to be designated for “LGBTQI+” travelers, now only denotes “LGB Travelers”
“LGB travelers can face special challenges abroad,” the website reads. “Laws and attitudes in some countries may affect safety and ease of travel. Many countries do not recognize same-sex marriage.
“Many countries also only recognize the male and female sex markers in passports and do not have IT systems at ports of entry that can accept other sex markers,” the page adds, the sole reference that transgender or nonbinary individuals may have received “X” markers on their passports.
The page also warns LGB travelers about their conduct abroad.
“About 70 countries still consider consensual same-sex relations a crime,” it reads. “In some of these countries, individuals who engage in same-sex sexual relations may face severe punishment.”
Since taking office last month, President Donald Trump has issued a slew of executive orders seeking to crack down on LGBTQ visibility and erase transgender rights or protections by refusing to acknowledge any gender identity beyond that of male or female and that does not align with a person’s assigned sex at birth.
One of those orders states that U.S. policy is only to recognize sex as binary and fixed at birth. It reverses a policy that allowed transgender, nonbinary, or intersex individuals to obtain “X” markers on their passports.
LGBTQ advocates monitoring federal websites have reported that some government agencies have removed any references to transgender identity and have hidden or deleted pages relating to the LGBTQ community.
As reported by The Washington Post, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed content pertaining to transgender people and gender identity from its website to comply with a directive from the Office of Personnel Management.
Entire pages about HIV testing for transgender people and information on LGBTQ youth-related behavioral health issues were removed. Additionally, the mpox vaccine — which is recommended for LGBTQ people who might be at higher risk of infection — was removed from a page of vaccine-specific recommendations.
The Post reported that agency staff were sent emails directing them to contact scientific journals to pull back manuscripts that were accepted but not yet published if they did not comply with Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology.”
According to the report, staffers at the CDC were given a list of at least 20 words or phrases to be used as a “guide” for determining whether to remove such material, including “gender,” “transgender,” “pregnant person,” “pregnant people,” “LGBT,” “transsexual,” “nonbinary,” “assigned male at birth,” “biologically male,” “biologically female,” and pronouns like “he/she/they/them.”
Staffers were also allegedly instructed to remove all references to “inclusion” or DEI practices, and to remove pronouns from their email signatures.
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